Red and blue

The coast sweeps north from Aberdeen to Peterhead in a series of inlets, caves and peninsula's. Steep sheets form superb aretes and walls, offering some of the best climbing in the north east. 

A warm spring morning is a scene of exacting pleasure.  Thronging colonies of guillemots and gulls defend lofty battlements. Squabbling, hopping, dropping  and diving they pluck slippery silver sprats from the dark waves, gulping them down in a horny, raucous racket. Kelp fingers tickle the seal who bobs and rolls in the swelling blue. Barnacle spattered slabs crackle and fizz. The walls, basking in the hot sun are freshly printed, shining pages. In strewn hand their black wrinkles and seams divide and vanish. Their sweating quartz veins glint sparkling white. The rock warms and the cold water slaps.

 Relics of an industrial past sleep amongst the rock. Great iron spikes, hooks, stairways.  Brown, rotting and gnarled. Exposed to the hard sea and bleaching rays they quietly exfoliate in iron elysium.  











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